Island Goats Are Safe for a While, Navy Says

A spokesman for the U.S. Navy said Monday that there are no plans “in the foreseeable future” to shoot the wild goats that remain on San Clemente Island and that “we are ready to talk with the Fund for Animals” about resumption of the animal rights group’s trapping program.

The group’s latest rescue effort, which ended July 25, netted 550 goats on the Navy-owned island about 60 miles off San Diego. The animals had been marked for slaughter by the Navy for ecological reasons.

‘Biobullet’ Procedure

Cleveland Amory, president of Fund for Animals, said in a telephone interview from New York late Monday that he had not been notified officially of the Navy announcement, but that, if true, “it’s good news.”

“It would be one of several new developments in our efforts to rescue the goats,” he said. “The most exciting is a gun that shoots what are called biobullets, bullets that would sterilize the female goats for about three years--long enough for us to get them all before they could keep reproducing, which they do quite rapidly.”

Ken Mitchell, the Navy spokesman, said “we would be very interested” in such a procedure and are anxious “to know more about it.”

Rare Diet for Goats

Estimates of the goat population remaining on the island, which is used during most of the year for gunnery practice by Navy ships, range from 200 to 600.

The herds, which at one time numbered in the thousands, have been the center of controversy for several years between the Navy and the Fund for Animals. Biologists claimed the animals were destroying the habitats of some other creatures that appear on the federal Endangered Species List.

The fund was allowed to mount a capture program last year and twice again this year after Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger forestalled a Navy plan to slaughter the goats. The captured animals were returned to the mainland for adoption by private citizens.

Amory said he would like to resume his rescue procedure next February or “at least during some winter month” because the goats are more likely to be out in the open during cooler weather.

Mitchell said it is “just possible” that the island may be “cold”--not under shellfire----during Christmas week. But he said details on a time schedule will have to be worked out later.